


O'er His Heart A Shadow

by cartouche



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Chess Metaphors, Extended Metaphors, General darkness, I'm ill, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Muvh Metaphors, and apologise profusely for this whole thing, dark!Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartouche/pseuds/cartouche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Queen to H5.' Q smiles, and there is a sinister twist in the curl of his lips.</p><p>Underestimation is Q's greatest strength. No one, not even M or Tanner or Eve, suspects what Q is, how he is. He has perfected a mask, a flawless facade that he stretches over his cheekbones and tucks under his chin. No one else can see what lurks beneath, no one but Bond. It takes one to know one, he thinks. There is something very dark hidden away in brown cardigans and pale fingers and James wonders what would happen if Q ever did get kidnapped. He is certain it would not be pretty. </p><p>-</p><p>James slowly comes to the realisation that Q is far more deadly than anyone anticipates, and finds it far too attractive for it to be healthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O'er His Heart A Shadow

Sometimes James thinks of Q as a liability. 

He watches him, skinny little body hidden inside bulky jumpers and hideous cardigans, slender fingers that could so easily be snapped, pale skin and a thin boyish face, amplified by his dark mop of curls and absurd glasses. He's so innocent, childlike and naïve, the way his eyes light up behind their lenses when he shows off his latest gadget or program. James can't imagine him tied to a chair, bloody and broken, pale skin mottled with purple bruises, a sly smirk still on his lips, defiant to the end. That is his job, to go out and kill, to laugh in the faces of maniacs and leave them as cold corpses. To protect people like Q, people who have never seen warfare and murder, never tasted the metallic tang of death, to make sure they wouldn't have to.

James is a killing machine. He hasn't always been so, once he was just like all the rest, mundane and boring, but those memories are dim. Little Jamie who smiled and laughed and played in heather and long grass is gone, leaving only the bitter orphaned James to be moulded and shaped, fashioned by Queen and country into the perfect weapon. He's a knife, honed and filed, a sharp deadly blade who skips from country to country and leaves a trail of destruction and dead bodies in his wake. A blade has no qualms about being pushed between ribs to slash and hack and kill, bathed in blood, hard as steel. He does it to protect people like Q, so that he doesn't ever have to witness death, so that he can stay pure and untainted and oblivious. 

That is what he tells himself. 

('Pawn to E4.' He says and Bond watches his slender fingers dance across the chess board. Q's eyes are wide and filled with a childish glee and he has to remind himself how old he is. Not a boy, not a spotty adolescent.) 

Q is not naïve, not untainted. He is as deadly and merciless as Bond, perhaps more so, and James has never been more frightened than when Q is behind his laptop, fingers flying across the keys and eyes boring into the screen. James leaves one or two dead bodies scattered around, four or five on a good day. Q can kill hundreds, maybe even more, with the click of a mouse, and make their bodies vanish without a trace.

He wonders when it started. Has Q always been this way or was it a long slow descent, a torturous corruption that he succumbed too? Did he wake up one day and realise a dark seed had blossomed during the night, filling his mind with twining tendrils? He'll never know and Q will never tell him. 

('Queen to H5.' And he knows it's futile. This is Q's battleground, his territory, James can not hope to win. Sometimes he feels like a pawn himself, airly waved around, ready to be placed by some giant, unseen hand. Q smiles, and there is a sinister twist in the curl of his lips.) 

Underestimation is Q's greatest strength. Not just from terrorists and radical idealists, who see him as a weak civilian, easily coerced. No one, not even M or Tanner or Eve, suspects what Q is, how he is. He has perfected a mask, a flawless facade that he stretches over his cheekbones and tucks under his chin. No one else can see what lurks beneath, no one but Bond. It takes one to know one, he thinks. There is something very dark hidden away in brown cardigans and pale fingers and James wonders what would happen if Q ever did get kidnapped. He is certain it would not be pretty. 

He puts a bullet through another skull and subconsiously realises he smirks up at the nearest camera. Does Q enjoy it? Watching him run across rooftops and drive down streets, killing with unerring precision? Does he get a shiver of delight as he pores over grainy CCTV footage and maintains a calm voice in Bond's ear? 

('Bishop to C4.' It is his execution, and he knows it. He stands by the chopping block and gladly lays his head down. The game is lost and it shows in the ruthless glint in green-grey eyes. He'd lost before they started.) 

Q could rule the world, if he was that way inclined. James knows and he knows James knows. He can cripple a government, all governments, with a few well placed letters and can start a war with his enter key. He could sit on a throne and claim all he sees as his own. Or he could slink in the background and pull the strings, make the politicians dance along to his tune. In a way he already does. MI6 should be wary of the cobra hiding as an innocent little boy in their midsts. They carry on oblivious. 

The attraction is inevitable, the pull of two magnets to each other, a force of nature, unable to stop or change course. Bond wouldn't want it any other way. He has had his fair share of beauiful, 'deadly' women, but none of them come with a sting quite like Q. He wonders if it counts as masochistic and decides he doesn't care. After all he has seen, he is allowed to be broken. At Six they dance around each other, wry smirks and sharp tongues. He admires how well Q hides it, makes everyone believe he's nothing more than a 110lb introverted computer geek, bumbling and awkward and innocuous. Eve has the cheek to give Bond the speech, If you break his heart, I'll show you the real meaning of pain. He resists the urge to laugh, knowing if anyone is going to get hurt it won't be the boy with dark hair and glasses. At night Q shows himself to James, bares his true nature, sleek and dangerous and twistedly dark. Orphans make the best recruits, his brain echoes numbly, as he thrusts, remorseless, and Q laps it up sadistically, clawing blunt fingernails into James' skin. They are both merciless and they both want it. They bring out the worst in each other and revel in it. 

They never use words and there is no need to. James is gone by sunrise.

('Queen to F7. Checkmate.' 4 moves and it's over. Q is lethally beautiful as always, even as the White Queen sacrafices his King to the great deities who govern their lives.)

Slowly he realises Q is deadlier than all the Double-Ohs put together. He could crush MI6 beneath one finger if he wanted. No one ever sees it, no one but James, the sole survivor allowed to peel back Q's mask and glance fleetingly at the chaos inside. He likes to think he lets Q do the same. Occasionally he wonders if anyone else ever sees it, a stranger on the Tube or a passer by on the street. They don't. If he is a knife then Q is a gun, an object that is hidden away until it is needed, a remote, unattached trigger that sends a clean bullet into someone's head without being baptised in their blood. Q smiles as he limps into his office and reaches for his chess set, the hand carved one Bond brought him back from Japan. Sentimental, in his old age.

The skinny boy in the too big parka and the hipster glasses is a liability. Q, his quartermaster, is a deadly asset. Bond doesn't need to protect him, keep him hidden, but he does it anyway, and it will always be Q he crawls to, licking his wounds.

'Welcome back 007. Shall we continue?' 

Life is a game of chess and Q is a master. 

**Author's Note:**

> The chess tactic Q uses against Bond is called the Scholar's Mate, and if done properly allows you to win in just four moves, which is kind of insane. 
> 
> [This](http://www.oldeworldcollectibles.com/images/jap%20set.jpg) is what I had in mind for Q's Japanese chess set. 
> 
> The title is a line stolen from the glorious Edgar Allen Poe's poem, Eldorado, one of my favourites.
> 
> Sorry for any mistakes, I'm ill and this is unbeta'd, so inaccuracies might be common. 
> 
> I've always seen Q as very underestimated, which prompted this fic. A lot of people view James Bond as the scary guy who can ruthlessly pull triggers but in a world that depends on technology I think Q is a force to be reckoned with.
> 
> Thank you for reading, comments are always gratefully received and replied too! :)


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